Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC) is Canada's main anti-vaccination group. It was founded in 1986 under the name Association for Vaccine Damaged Children, became the Vaccination Risk Awareness Network in 1994 and adopted its current name in 2014. The group has been contributing to vaccine hesitancy in Canada, encouraging citizens to forgo immunization and legislators to support anti-vaccine regulations and legislation.
Vaccine hesitancy VCC spreads the discredited hypothesis that vaccination causes autism and denies that the introduction of vaccines led to a decline of the targeted diseases. They blame vaccination for a variety of ailments, including autism spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, ADHD, allergies, and asthma. The group argues incorrectly that a vaccine against COVID-19 is unnecessary. Late in the pandemic, it still repeated the discredited myth that the pandemic is no more severe than the flu. Although a small fraction of vaccine doses provoke serious adverse reactions, health professionals agree the benefits of being protected against a wide range of infectious diseases far outweigh the risks. Responding directly to communications from Vaccine Choice Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada stated that the science on vaccines is unequivocal, but laments the actions of "a small but vocal anti-vaccination community that spreads false information. They use powerful emotional images and misinformation with their message. This creates confusion and fear for parents who are trying to make the best decisions for the health and wellbeing of their children." Timothy Caulfield estimates the proportion of Canadians who exhibit vaccine hesitancy between 20 and 30 percent, connecting the anti-vaccination movement to a rise in populism and a mistrust in expertise. The World Health Organization has identified vaccine hesitancy as one of 2019's ten global health threats to watch.
Role in COVID-19 pandemic Similarly to many anti-vaccination groups, Vaccine Choice Canada is opposing several measures instituted by public health authorities to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its President repeated some of the most widespread myths about the virus, including that it is no more dangerous than influenza and that developing a vaccine is therefore unnecessary. Influenza is actually responsible for 3,500 deaths in a typical year, while the death toll of four months of COVID-19 already exceeded 8,000 at that point. Jonathan Jarry from the Office for Science and Society warned that with anti-vaccination groups misrepresenting legitimate concerns about rushing vaccines into production as anti-vaccine arguments, "we have the beginnings of a perfect storm on our hands to fuel vaccine misinformation". Vaccine Choice Canada partnered with Hugs Over Masks, a newly created group protesting against mandatory mask-wearing. With Denis Rancourt and others, Vaccine Choice Canada tabled a lawsuit against most Canadian governments, seeking to have the courts strike down measures mandated by public health authorities, including regulations introducing the obligation to wear masks in interior public spaces that several provinces adopted. The lawsuit, filed in July 2020 by lawyer Rocco Galati with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, alleges lockdowns, physical distancing and mandatory masking violate the constitutional rights of Canadians. It also makes wider claims about a "New (Economic) World Order" and a "massive and concentrated push for mandatory vaccines of every human on the planet earth with concurrent electronic surveillance" at the behest of "global Billionaire, Corporate and Organizational Oligarchs", which refer to conspiracy theories widely shared on social media by a variety of fringe groups. The lawsuit also names the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, accusing the information network of a "stalinist" campaign to hide the truth about public health measures.
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